


sing a song (that'd be just ours)

by anniebibananie



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon, F/M, Post Great War, Soulmate AU, Tumblr Prompt, soul marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 06:54:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18686395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anniebibananie/pseuds/anniebibananie
Summary: A long time ago, Sansa had believed in true love. It was hard to not fall into the romance of it all, and she was more romantic than most. Her and Jeyne would talk about soul marks and who might share their own. It was one of their favorite games to make up stories about the people around them, how it must have felt to see the other’s mark and knew they were the one.Though, later Sansa would spend long stretches of time thinking about her parents whose marks didn’t match. She would wonder if Talisa and Robb shared one. She thought about all the ways marks made little sense, and the fact that there were a lot easier and more practical things to hope for than true love—safety, for one. Perhaps simple happiness.But now, across from her, Jon Snow had a mark that made all those thoughts leave her.





	sing a song (that'd be just ours)

Sansa had never seen him shirtless, she realized.

Maybe when they were children on a particularly hot day, but that was the sort of thing she would have avoided back then when faced with the concept of impropriety. The boys being obnoxious and Arya running around in circles, and Sansa would have felt unbelievably out of place. No, she had never seen him shirtless. 

Now she saw it all. 

He was laid out on  _her_ bed because it would be harder for people to find him here, they wouldn’t think to search her chambers, and he was close to passing out. His breaths were still coming in quickly, uneven, despite the fact that it had to have been an hour or two since he had done any fighting. It was difficult to know time, and Sansa was as exhausted as he looked. 

She wrung out the cloth in the basin, red and dark, and swept it over his stomach again. It was hard not to reach out with a finger and trail over the deep scars from where he had been betrayed once, but it wasn’t her place. It wasn’t the time, and she didn’t want to remind him of one tragedy after only just facing another. 

“Would you turn over?” she asked, attempting to divert her eyes from his stomach as he opened his own. “I can just check to see if there are any cuts on your back to be mended, and then I promise it will all be done.” 

“You must be exhausted,” he said, his face scrunching up, “and here I am making you tend to me.” 

“I offered,” she whispered. “As soon as it’s done we can both get some sleep and attempt to forget all the work that will come with waking up.” 

He groaned. “Don’t remind me. Don’t remind  _yourself.”_

She hummed, and he finally flipped over. When she saw his back, she gasped. 

A long time ago, Sansa had believed in true love. It was hard to not fall into the romance of it all, and she was more romantic than most. Her and Jeyne would talk about soul marks and who might share their own. It was one of their favorite games to make up stories about the people around them, how it must have felt to see the other’s mark and knew they were the one. 

Though, later Sansa would spend long stretches of time thinking about her parents whose marks didn’t match. She would wonder if Talisa and Robb shared one. She thought about all the ways marks made little sense, and the fact that there were a lot easier and more practical things to hope for than true love—safety, for one. Perhaps simple happiness. 

“Sans?” he asked, head tilted to the side. 

Her face must have looked something quite worrisome because he was springing up, but she couldn’t have him turn fully toward her. There were tears already coming to her eyes, and she moved from the chair beside her bed to the mattress itself so she could sit behind him. 

On his shoulder, there was a crow with fluttering wings. She brought a hand up, fingers splayed, and she wanted to cover the whole thing. She wanted to trail her pointer finger over the mark until she could recognize the lines in her sleep. If she touched it, maybe it would disappear, though. Maybe it would vanish. 

She touched his skin anyways, and he shivered underneath her finger. 

“Sans?” he repeated, his voice huskier and more awake. “What—”

She stood up from the bed, and she lifted her skirts. She lifted them past scars and fresh bruises, and she showed him the crow that had always sat on her upper thigh. At one point, Ramsay had taken a thin knife and tried to cut through the neck of it thinking it a good joke. The angry, red mark remained, but the crow wasn’t dead. It flew still, fluttering wings similar to Jon’s. 

He reached out a hand but he didn’t touch, instead looking up through his lashes to get permission first. She nodded, feeling herself clench without truly meaning to, and felt her breath halt as he hovered his fingers over the mark. 

“I don’t—” His eyes were transfixed on her thigh, and her eyes were transfixed on him. 

“Have you had this the whole time?” she asked. 

He shook his head, and finally he looked up to meet her eyes. There was something deep and unreadable there, something that made Sansa feel on display but also like she never wanted to step away from that light. 

“I used to have just a circle,” he said. “When Melisandre brought me back, I thought it was supposed to mean my mate would be the Night’s Watch. I thought it was a cruel joke from the universe that I was meant to love what had killed me.” 

“My whole life, I’ve…” she trailed off, her throat tightening. Sansa wasn’t sure how to vocalize the feelings that were warring within her, the unbelievability of it. That at the end of the world, after  _surviving_ the end of the world, her soul mate was still alive and had been hiding right in front of her. 

Except he hadn’t been hidden, because Sansa had spent moons working over the feelings that blossomed in her chest. For so long, she had fought those feelings knowing they were wrong, but then she found out he was her cousin, and now she found out he was her  _soul mate._ The universe may not have been as cruel as she thought, but it certainly had a sense of humor. 

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she finally finished. “I stopped thinking you existed.”

He sighed and ran a hand down his face, the weary lines somehow looking deeper. “We can forget about them if you want. You don’t have to force yourself—”

She rolled her eyes. “Jon,” she said. He really did look like a man in love, but she didn’t want to give herself away to that quite yet. Not until she was  _sure. “_ Do you love the Dragon Queen? You came to me, you came to my rooms, I thought…”

 _I was the person who made you feel safe,_ she thought but couldn’t finish. Sansa had always held onto the belief that while Jon may be divided and confused, he could at least find peace with her. Maybe she was just easy, though, or comfortable in a way he didn’t have to worry about. 

“How could I not?” he asked, and the gravel in his voice made Sansa think he was near tears, too. “I wanted to run, and you turned me around and—”

“Put you on another war path. Continued your fight.” 

He shook his head, and though there was exhaustion weighing on his limbs he pushed himself slowly up to his feet. Sansa stepped closer to stop him, but it was too late. His hand came to her face, pushing red locks away from pale skin, and he set his eyes to her own. 

“Made me feel alive. Gave me purpose.” Jon rested his hand on the curve of her neck, the end of his fingers dipping into the hair at the back, thumb rubbing over her pulse point. “You’re the only person I trust with me.” 

She understood what he was trying to say. He gave her all of him, the truth of him, while he doled out versions of himself to others. At some point he had actually taken her advice and attempted to be smarter than those who’d fallen before him, but sometimes she worried she had only helped to fracture him. In his attempt at survival, he had compartmentalized himself to save the energy, to save the North. 

Here, though, in front of her he could always freely share all of it. She was fairly sure she knew this because it was the same in return. Sansa trusted few with all of herself, and while it was tiring to wear a mask all day it kept them all safe and it kept the North running smoothly. Maybe there would be a day where she could let it go more easily, but until then the pieces of herself were what most got. 

Now she definitely was crying a few delicate tears dripping down her face. Before her own hand made it to wipe them away, he was there cupping her cheeks and making the tears vanish with the pads of his thumbs. 

“I love you,” she said. “I didn’t need a soul mark to tell me that.” 

He smiled, and it pained Sansa that it might have been weeks since she had seen that genuine smile. She was happy she could give it to him. 

“I trust you, I respect you, I couldn’t do any of this without you,” he said in return. “I never loved her, Sans. It would have been impossible with me already in love with you.” 

She pushed forward and gave him a kiss, and she hated to fall on all those old tropes of the romantic younger version of herself, but it really did feel as if she was melting into him. Though, maybe they were simply exhausted and it felt as if they could relax for just a moment. They could succumb to this simple desire. 

“Can we sleep?” she asked. 

He nodded and turned to pull the sheet back as she began to take off her dress. There were the sounds of fabric and leather falling to the floor, and then she slipped into the bed behind him. He offered her his chest, and she curled as much of herself around him as she could manage. 

In the morning, there would be a million things they would need to take care of. Here, now, she listened to Jon’s heartbeat underneath her cheek and let it lull her to sleep, happy to be in the arms of the one she loved.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr: [anniebibananie](http://anniebibananie.tumblr.com/)


End file.
